For fire alone purifies; _fire alone renders some fusions and combinations possible_. Damp the ardour of man, therefore, reduce his fire, and the sexual act does indeed become an affair from which many might be justified in shrinking. The procreative love of human beings was obviously designed on the presumption that they would remain warm-blooded animals. Once they grew to be cold-blooded, it of necessity became improper, impious. The procreation of fish is accomplished without any embrace, without any _étreinte_ of male and female: but fish are cold-blooded. Thus in support of the Puritan’s chilling cry that there was a life away from the fundamental instinct of Life, there arose very soon a chorus of disillusioned and indignant married women’s voices, who knew the anguish and embarrassment of human sexual life with a human fish, and who were not in the least prepared to conceal its horrors. And how convincing all this seemed! How many sensitive and intelligent girls have not listened to this married woman’s chorus in support of the Puritan’s plea, and felt their hope in life, their trust in life, their love of life, shake in its foundations! So much so, indeed, that it is now possible for them to listen no longer with suspicion but with eager interest to those of their “fortunate” sisters who are too unhealthy, or too deficient in vigour to feel any desire for their principal adaptations; it is possible even for the naturally sterile among women, for the women below par in every respect, and incapable, either through repulsiveness or botchedness, to fulfil their destiny, to pass through the world without being despised, without being looked down upon. And since the number of women who lack the vigour and the spirit really to crave for their principal adaptations increases every year, an atmosphere of reality and naturalness is imparted to the artificial and destructive claims of Puritanism, which is as deceiving as it is dangerous, and as difficult to dissipate as it was slow and gradual to form. It is precisely because women are so deeply in touch with Life, so secretly and unconsciously Life’s ally, Life’s ambassador, Life’s _custodian_, that they cannot help being miserable and in pain nowadays. The voice of Life inside them tells them emphatically that things are wrong, that the muddle man has made of Life is tragic, cruel, insufferable. As Life’s unconscious advocate, Woman is essentially opposed to modernity, however much she may seem in favour of it. When she appears to be most in favour of it, she is only following modern man and his ideals most closely.